Setting Boundaries: A Work in Progress

My journey in recovery has been met with many highs and many lows. I got sober, life happened and I lost one of my main coping mechanisms. So the past three and a half years felt quite raw for me because I was dealing with life head on, without a means for numbing out the pain. Pain is a reality for everyone, but something that I found a way to escape with alcohol. So getting sober was only the beginning for me, and honestly, a small aspect to what living sober meant. Learning how to live without alcohol means dealing with my feelings when they are happening to me, finding healthier coping mechanisms, finding ways to self soothe and opening my eyes to the ways that I am accountable in my own life. It has been a journey in self exploration and growth and it feels like every six months or so brings about a new theme that I am somehow forced to look at.

This past fall I have had to take a deep look at my personal relationships and the boundaries that I have with others. When I got sober I was suddenly feeling so many emotions that I had repressed before. I have always been an open-book with people but without alcohol I was now opening myself up to experiencing other people's emotions on a more deep level as well. I needed that piece of connection to know that I was going to be OK, and it was mainly through other people who were struggling in their own recovery that I could truly feel understood. Of course, I have always been able to empathize with others, but I learned in my teens a way to anesthetize myself from feeling others', and subsequently my, pain. Alcohol built a protective wall for me and when I got sober that wall crumbled.







What that left me with was this raw feeling. It was as if alcohol was a mask for me that I had taken off. I was now exposed and so my resistance to feeling other people's pain was removed. This meant that the balance in my relationships shifted. I was suddenly not the only one suffering or acting out all the time. I felt like I could truly connect with people on a new level but with this came an inability to disconnect. That is what started to take an emotional toll on me. I used to consider myself an extreme extrovert, at the very end of the spectrum, but in my first year of sobriety I spent a lot of time at home alone. I took hot baths almost every night and slept A LOT. I now recognize my need for space and down time because it is not easy for me to completely shake off other people's feelings.

This fall, I have been presented with so many opportunities to be of service to the people around me. Whether it was with my family members, my students, my husband or my friends, I have gained a deeper understanding of how to support others in their grief and hardships. This has led to me examining my own boundaries with others, especially those whom I am not particularly close with. In order to be of best service to others, I have to first serve myself. This has everything to do with setting boundaries for myself. At the end of the day, I am the one who is solely responsible for my feelings, nobody else is, which means that I cannot expect anyone to 'fix' me, nor can I assume that I can 'fix' them. Recognizing this has helped me in the process of healthily detaching from those around me so that I can find more compassion for them. It might seem counterintuitive, but as long as I have a healthy detachment from another which is done through respecting my own boundaries, I can better provide for them an empathetic, listening ear. 

This might mean turning off my phone in the evening so that I can devote my time at home to unwinding and spending time with my husband or alone to recharge. It might mean setting a time to have a Skype call with a friend rather than messaging back and forth long winded stories throughout the day at any given time. It could be knowing when to leave a social gathering when the conversations have shifted into territory that makes me feel uncomfortable and disrespected. I have been discovering new ways to be more true to myself in this practice. 

As I become more cognizant of this practice I have continued to be presented with new opportunities for growth. I have had a few experiences where I left conversations feeling uncomfortable with something a friend said or some way that they acted. Some type of line was crossed and it was unclear to me how I should have handled the situation but the one certain thing was that I wanted to avoid it in the future.







In sobriety, I came to understand a lot of the dysfunction in my relationships,  I exhibited many codependent behaviours with my loved ones. For example, when I felt anxious about a situation, it was almost instinctual for me to contact a friend immediately and dump all of my anxieties and emotions onto them. I have come to learn that there is venting and then there is dumping and the latter is not healthy and infringes on another's boundaries. 

Ok, Confession Time: I am still guilty of doing this; but it is something that I am working on. There are a select few people in my life (my parents, sister, husband and some close friends) who I do this with sometimes, but I am trying to become more respectful of their boundaries.

This is all a part of being a grown up. It has not been an easy process for me, accepting that I am the only person responsible for my feelings. That I am the only one who can truly make myself feel better and usually what that requires is trying my best to stay with whatever it is that I am feeling at that moment. Fully digesting my grief, sadness, frustration, anger, envy etc. is not easy. This does not mean that talking with my friends is dysfunctional, because it can be an extremely healthy tool for me. It is an important coping mechanism but it is starting include processing my feelings prior to reaching out to someone, or sharing how I feel with a friend without expecting them to try and "fix" my problem. I am coming to learn that it also entails communicating with them how and when is best for both of us. For example, I have some friends who prefer to set a time, get together and chat face-to-face when something big has come up, and others who prefer to see if I am available for a quick phone call when they are processing something heavy.

Another aspect of this for me is determining how I prefer to communicate with others. I have come to learn that I have a strong preference for face-to-face contact. This can be over Skype or in person, but the point is, I like to be able to communicate directly with someone face-to-face because text messaging can feel intrusive for me and also confusing. I also just don't really like typing on my phone, and I find it particularly draining when the person on the other end is going through some kind of emotional crisis.

I am still in the beginning stages of establishing what my boundaries are because up until now it has not been a strength of mine. Shifting my perspective and changing my behaviour has felt quite freeing. It also makes a huge difference in how I handle the conversations I consciously take more time to respond to. The anxiety that ensues for me when I feel suddenly burdened by a message from a friend in distress is relieved when I realize that I do not have to read their message right away and get back to them ASAP. In the end I can be of much better service to the people I care about when I honour myself and give myself time to respond when it is a good time for both of us. 






I am still very much in the beginning stages of exploring my personal boundaries and how to set them and so I am open to anyone's suggestions in the comment section below. Life is a work in progress, and I hope that, if anything, this post has resonated with someone else who is struggling to set boundaries in their life today.

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